Chicago Wildlife - 3. Takes Two To Tango/Tussle

“Well well, you look lost, sailor. You need me to point you to the nearest submarine? Or are you looking for irreputable bars overly saturated with women, or men, with loose morals?”

“Wow, judging by the scathing rating of that opener going through the roof, I can’t see any reason to not think you’re up to something, Dee. How has no one caught you without your fetish gear on yet?”

“Aw, Foxy, if this were fetish gear, I think you’d know it,” I reply, gently motioning my hands towards my decidedly not hard crotch.

Blue Fox is perhaps the only other man around here who shares my sense of humor. It’s such a shame that he’s a goody two-shoes who sides with the law. We’d be excellent partners in crime. Well, he’d make it more entertaining at least. Not that I’m complaining about the loads of entertainment he brings me already. Other superheroes are so boring to tussle with, but Foxy? He really reinvigorates the game of cat and mouse.

I notice his eyes veer towards my crotch momentarily when I gesture at them. Another thing that I liked about him- I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually had a thing for me. Always helps with a theft if the mark is infatuated with you. He isn’t so bad on the eyes either, but I can safely say that I certainly don’t have the same feelings for him.

“You just keep living in that circle of denial,” he says.

I put on my most charming smile.

“So what brings you out all the way here, Foxy? Isn’t this past your ‘jurisdiction’? Or did daddy loosen your leash a little?”

That’s right, push his buttons. Poor little Foxy doesn’t like when mean old people like me remind him of his tenure under the tutelage of one of Chicago’s first superheroes, Light Devil. I’ve seen enough battered women around these parts to know an abusive relationship when I see one. Aww, but doesn’t it just make you want to give him a hug?

“You know, I’m sure that would’ve stung harder if you’d made that joke six years ago, when I was still working with him,” he says sternly.

No playful banter in his voice. No bemused look. No feeling of being the superior here. Right where I want him. Now to shift the tone so much as to throw him off balance and skedaddle while he’s left picking up the pieces to his psyche.

“Okay, fine, I get it. We’ve all had our fair share of bad bosses. You think I liked working for that pompous douchebag of a manager at 7-Eleven? Or that one boss I hated at that Wells Fargo. You know, the one over at Westchester? Always smelled of B.O. and peppermints? Had to turn my attention to the pretty diamonds they sometimes took in in order to keep my sanity at that place.”

I put on a face of sudden realization.

“Oh, but this isn’t about me! It’s about you! What I’m saying is that I understand what it’s like living under the shadow of someone more powerful than you, desperate to get out and prove that you’re not as weak as they say you are. I mean, look at me. Self-made millionaire and no one telling me what to do.”

“Except literally every cop in the city, along with most of the superheroes who bother talking to you first before punching. But otherwise a touching story.”

Crap. Did I overdo it with the fake sympathy? I never know how to do those perfectly. I saunter over to the edge of the rooftop, facing away from him so that he doesn’t see anything on my face that would suggest recovering from being exposed like that.

“Don’t sweat the details, Foxy. You know what I’m getting at.”

New plan. I turn to face him again, looking directly into those brown eyes of his. Why didn’t he choose the name Brown Fox when he emancipated himself from Light Devil? It’s always bugged me.

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed the fact that you still haven’t answered my question. What brings Chicago’s most adorable little Cub Scout all the way out to the edges of the lake?”

“Oh, since you asked so nicely, I heard there was a hot dog vendor down here that sells the best Chicago dogs in town. Have you seen him, Dee?”

Dripping with sarcasm. And also presenting me with a new problem. I don’t have time to chat all night with him. A fight would take too long. It would just result with him being slightly out of breath and me slinking away and having to spend the rest of the night hiding from him. I’ll have to play his guessing game and quickly. Get to the point and get him out of my life for one night so that I can steal a priceless jewel and Lokitty doesn’t scratch up the couch.

Okay, let’s see here. Why would Blue Fox be lakeside? Something to do with work, obviously. He’s not in his costume to look good for me. Something, or someone, on a cosmic scale would be too much for him to handle alone, so… somebody with either no powers or very weak powers. And their goons. Goons never have powers themselves. Now who is based around here, who hasn’t been active recently, who is weak enough for someone to send a former sidekick alone to go deal with?

“Let me guess. Ditto Perfect got his hands on some poor sap’s power armor or doohickey, and now you’ve got two flashy supervillains to contend with!”

“Hmm…” he says, crossing his arms and staring at me.

“Oh, like you’ve never heard of a lucky guess before,” I reply.

Ditto Perfect, so endearingly named because he constantly says “Ditto, perfect!” as a response to just about anything, has the nifty super power of copying other people’s personalities and even their powers, so long as he has constant opportunities to touch them. This apparently extends to touching their blood, and guess what supervillain gadgets always have a trace amount of on them? He’s the only one who matches all the qualities Foxy would need to come down here.

“For your sake, Dee, I hope you’re not part of whatever scheme he has going on,” he says, eyeing me down.

I give a small laugh, a genuine one at that.

“Really, Foxy, you put too much faith in the man. You think someone like Ditto Perfect can ‘scheme?’”

He continues to stare at me and I realize what I’ve not done.

“Really? You’re grouping me in with him? I thought you thought I had more class than that!”

He seems to believe that a little more than anything else I’ve said all night.

“You know, I could have somebody else take care of Ditto Perfect instead. The Justice Youth America still need more field experience and, like you said, Ditto Perfect isn’t exactly a criminal mastermind. That leaves me more time to spend with you.”

What.

“I don’t know which shiny rock caught your eye this time, but I don’t see Disappearance hopping across rooftops at night in his criminal outfit just because he wanted some fresh air.”

“It’s Chicago, Foxy. I have to take whatever fresh air I can get.”

He is not pleased.

“Now go be a superhero and stop that walking, talking, cotton candy man while I get back to my business,” I say, tersely.

Silence. Silence is never good. Oh crap, what did I just say? He runs at me. The jig is up. I smile sweetly at him, and then fold myself backwards, right off the edge of the rooftop.

“Auf wiedersehen, Foxy!”

I fall down the next floor and grab the window ledge on the floor after. I open the window and pull myself in.

“Stay where you are, Dee! I don’t want to seriously hurt you!” I hear the big lug call out.

After a quick scan of the unlit room, I run to the other side of it and unlock and open the door. THEN I duck into the open closet and curl myself up as tight as I can, kind of like an armadillo, to make myself look like the owner just threw a balled up pile of dirty laundry into the closet. And then I wait. People tend to look for “people”-shaped objects when looking for someone, not spherical lumps, and definitely not when in a hurry or in the dark. Sure enough, Foxy comes bounding in from outside, sees the opened door, and runs straight for it.

“You can’t run from me, Dee. I know all your tricks.”

You stupid, pretty boy. I hear him run out the door and down the hall. And then stop.

“Ah, shit.”

Crap, he pieced it together. Now or never! I uncurl and bolt out the closet and out through the window.

“Dee!”

He’s already back in the room. I’m already out the window and up the side of the building, thanks to the adhesives on my gloves. Thanks, Spider-man! As I near the top, I kick my feet outwards and curl backwards, letting go of the building once my momentum’s at a certain angle, giving myself a stylish leap up to the rooftop and a couple seconds shaved off my time. And then I’m sprinting once again, as Foxy is right behind me. Curse that super jump of his.

“But think of the children, Foxy! All those… dockside children… who are orphans… and live right next to Ditto Perfect. …Hey, you can’t DISprove it.”

“You can make more tasteless jokes at MCC.”

“Tasteless?!”

I jump off one building and grapple onto the next. I hear a thumping sound and when I arrive at the next building, he’s already there waiting for me. Typical. He goes for the sucker punch technique, but that’s so outdated that my grandpa would’ve considered it an old geezer, and I swiftly bend my torso to the left to dodge it. His fist glides through the air, with the rest of his body following it.

“Whoa!” he says.

For a fraction of a second, his face is close to mine. His hair smells like he used strawberry-scented shampoo this morning. I am suddenly hungry for some strawberries. I kick him away.

“Rude,” I says.

Foxy rubs the place where I kicked him.

“Says the man who probably mugged seven old ladies today alone,” he retorts.

I feign shock.

“Those strong, independent ladies tried to rob me first!”

He recomposes himself and begins a roundhouse kick. I duck backwards to avoid it, but then he abandons the kick, revealing it to be a fake out, and delivers a lower kick to my side. Ouch, motherfucker! I retaliate by punching the side of his leg, which was the closest piece of him that I could hit at the time. He probably barely felt it. I backflip away from him.

“Resorting to violence so soon? I’m just saying, I’ve probably punched less people in my criminal career than you have.”

“Just shut up and come in quietly.”

“Oh, no. Everyone I’ve talked to says that I’m a screamer.”

I charge at him, causing him to put up a defensive stance, and then I bend backwards, sliding on the concrete on my knees, right between his legs. As soon as I’m behind him, I kick him in the back. Perhaps this pisses him off, because the next thing I know, he turns around, grabs me “delicately” by the arm, and does a full spin revolution before throwing me towards a wall. His aim is (hopefully not intentionally) off, and my body ends up folding around the edge of a corner wall. It hurt like hell, but it also cost him. The price? A lot of distance between the two of us.

“I’ll see you in the Bahamas, Foxy,” I say.

And then I kick myself off the wall, over the edge of the building, land on the side of a building on the opposite side of the street, clinging to it with the adhesive gloves, scamper up to the fourth floor, and punch in a window, shattering it pretty easily. I climb in quickly. It will be a lot harder for a Cub Scout to enter this hole compared to the two story building we were just on.

“Ahhh!” someone screams.

A little old lady is sitting in a rocking chair, pausing in the middle of her intense knitting session to scream at harmless, little ole me.

“Pardonne moi, mademoiselle,” I say gently and with a smile.

And then I run out of the room and out into the hallway. Now then, which way? Up, or down? What would Foxy think I do? Well, he’d assume I’d go up to the roof to grapple away, but THEN he’d assume that I’d assume that he would assume that, and would thus go down the stairs and out the front door, disappearing into some dark alleyway. So, I’M going up to the roof.

I make my way up there and, not seeing his perk butt anywhere, assume that I gave him the slip for now. He’s probably still somewhere in the building, if not combing the streets below. I should probably make my getaway now while the going’s good. I use my grappling gun on the nearest building and start swinging my way to the Field Museum.